Modi begins vratri fast with Kamakhya visit

By Our Staff Reporter

Guwahati, April 8: Prime Minister rendra Modi will observe strict religious fasts during vratri starting from Friday. During nine days of Chaitra vratri, the Prime Minister will abstain from having food and will only intake water.

This morning, Modi offered prayers at Kamakhya Temple in Guwahati.

Modi, who came here from Delhi last night, drove up to the base of the Kamakhya temple this morning and walked up the flight of steps to the shrine amid tight security to offer his prayers to the Goddess in the sanctum sanctorum where media was not allowed.

The Prime Minister, accompanied by Union minister and BJP's chief ministerial candidate for Assam Sarbanda Sonowal and BJP leader Dr Himanta Biswa Sharma, also performed puja on the occasion of the first day of vratri at the Shakti Pith dedicated to Goddess Durga and her various incartions, temple officials said.

"He washed his feet at the Soubhagya Kund (a sacred pond). Soon after his arrival, he had told us to ensure that no devotee faced inconvenience because of his visit," a temple priest said, adding that the Doloi Samaj greeted the PM with a memento of the temple. Modi spent nearly half-an-hour inside the temple, emerging with folded hands and vermilion-smeared forehead and garlands and traditiol Assamese 'gamocha' around his neck, after offering obeisance.

Coming out of the shrine, Modi, who visited the temple for the first time, went towards the waiting people and shook hands with them and left for his campaign for the second and fil phase of elections on April 11 in 61 constituencies in middle and lower Assam.

"After many years, on first day of vratri, getting an opportunity to visit Kamakhya Temple & offer prayers to Maa Kamakhya. Feeling blessed," the PM wrote on Twitter.

"Prayed to Maa Kamakhya, for the development of our tion & the wellbeing of our citizens," he wrote in another tweet.

Millions in the country fast during the vratris and Prime Minister rendra Modi has been fasting during the vratri since forty years.

The Hindu calendar New Year is being celebrated across the country today, marking the first day of spring season and New Year's Day of the traditiol Hindu calendar based on the beginning of new moon.

Prime Minister rendra Modi also tweeted his wishes saying, "greetings to people across India celebrating the advent of the New Year. May this new year bring joy & prosperity."

Addressing election rallies in the State later, Modi invoked a couplet of the Pura which stated that the goddess resides in every household in the form of the women of the house in Kamrupa, the ancient me of Guwahati.